Alexandersmap

    Category: Personal Growth

    • Our Box of Stories

      I spent a few minutes scanning the Substack of a clever hipster with far more subscribers than I have on that platform and really all of my platforms combined. She stated that blogging is long dead, and Substack was getting there itself. And I smiled to myself, knowing just how uncool I’ve become for still calling it a blog. Why not simply call it writing? Or a daily newsletter? Or the complicated ramblings of a self-absorbed passenger on this ship of fools we call now? It’s all just the great conversation, in whatever way we dare to put it out there. The rest is positioning ourselves as close to relevance as we can get, if we choose to. Some of us forgo influence for deeper, calmer waters. It all matters, and none of it matters, all at once. We do the best we can where we are, with what we have.

      Our box of stories is that which surrounds us, holding us in place so we don’t stray too far into reckless places. My story is telling me to be responsible today and go to work after writing this [whatever we want to call it] and doing a few chores around the homestead so it’s still in one piece when I eventually return. There’s more to the story than that, but why bog down your story by going long with mine? Let’s keep it real, and really concise.

      The thing is, we know we ought to re-write our stories now and then, just to change the box we find ourselves trapped in. We’re all running out of time to experience all that lies outside our box. That’s the underlying story, no matter how we write it. We don’t have to ruin all our stories, but we ought to stretch the box beyond the limits those stories have given us. Today is as good a day to try something new as any. What are we currently writing? Make it fresh and a little bolder than the box can contain.

    • That Fierce Embrace

      It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
      or many gods. I want to know if you belong or feel
      abandoned.
      If you know despair or can see it in others.
      I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world
      with its harsh need to change you. If you can look back
      with firm eyes saying this is where I stand. I want to know
      if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living
      falling toward the centre of your longing. I want to know
      if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequences of love
      and the bitter
      unwanted passion of your sure defeat. I have been told, in that fierce embrace, even
      the gods speak of God.

      — David Whyte, Self Portrait

      To be ourself in a world that expects acceptance, or at the very least acquiescence, is audacious. Mothers, wanting the very best for their babies, might call it reckless. Best to fall in line, get a proper degree, leading to a proper job, offering a proper life. ‘Tis proper, we’re trained to believe, to focus on the score. Grades and status and titles and the right zip code.

      The score is memento mori. The score is tempus fugit. If we are to melt into that fierce heat of living, we must go against the grain more often than our tribe may be comfortable with. They only want the best for us. We know this, and we must learn to be bold anyway. A lifetime is far too short for all that we want for ourselves, let alone all that our tribe expects of us.

      The real question, the one we’ve avoided all along in this tribal dance, is why won’t we simply embrace it?

    • Release the Dancers

      “He was weary of himself, of cold thoughts and intellectual dreams. Life a poem! Not when you perpetually went around inventing your life instead of living it. How meaningless it was, empty, empty, empty. This hunting for yourself, slyly observing your own tracks—in a circle, of course; this pretending to throw yourself into the stream of life and then at the same time sitting and angling for yourself and fishing yourself up in some peculiar disguise! If only it would seize him: life, love, passion—so that he wouldn’t be able to invent it, but so that it would invent him.”
      — Jens Peter Jacobsen, Niels Lyhne

      There’s a fine line between imagination and invention. We dream big dreams, or perhaps simply a wee wish or two, and they each dance about happily in our imagination until we do the work to realize them or eventually get sick of being teased by the dancers and find something else with which to fancy for awhile. Life isn’t meant to be a dream, it’s meant to be a gradual realization of our potential. It’s a matter of turning imagination into reality through deliberate and purposeful work. That line is crossed through action.

      “Decide what to be and go be it.”… —The Avett Brothers lyric that lives rent free in my head.

      Incremental experience—the experience that Jacobsen’s character Niels is pining for—in turn forever reinvents us. The person we’ve become is far more capable of doing this next thing than the person we were then. We imagine possibilities we couldn’t imagine from our previous vantage point, and we move along a timeline of steady progression.

      It’s natural to chafe at the limitations of our current level of experience. This discomfort is a catalyst for change—if we allow it to be anyway. Unless we’re forever paralyzed by inaction and low agency. We must develop our voice over time and learn to use it to realize possibility:

      Alas for those that never sing,
      But die with all their music in them!
      — Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Voiceless

      We are forever inventing ourselves or settling into the stasis of an under-developed character. We must raise our voice and sing! This life is flying along with or without our active participation. By all means, step away from the mirage of dreams and do something with this day. Release the dancers!

    • Marking the Path of Being

      “All the bright precious things fade so fast, and they don’t come back.” — from F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

      I love a rainy day with nothing much to do. I find there haven’t been all that many of either rainy days or days without much to do this summer, so savoring the sensation feels right. Let tomorrow bring the crush; today is for too precious to concede to busy.

      The tricky thing about being busy is that we lose the capacity to savor when we’re trying desperately not to drown. There’s no floating with stillness when the waves are choppy and filled with sharks and other drowning people. An angry sea is no place to be. We must seek stillness in our lives if we are to find awareness and peace.

      When we get busy things tend to slip away with time. We focus on the important and urgent instead of the essential few. If it’s important we ought to focus on it, right? I mean, it’s important. And if it’s urgent we don’t have time to debate, we just do. This mindset makes us feel productive, but it forever kicks the essential down the curb.

      “How many pages will be left empty because your process was dampened by doubt and deliberation?” — Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

      We must develop and nurture our non-negotiables in life. Mine include time to exercise, read, sleep, and yes: to write. If I get enough of these four, then even the stormiest day feels manageable. Writing every day coaxes the busy mind into awareness. To dabble in the essential for an hour, or a few hours, before the angry sea attempts to wash over us is a gift we give to ourselves. What do we make of this accumulation of blog posts and pages written? Will it take us anywhere in the end? It’s taken us this far already, friend.

      A lifetime is an empty and hollow thing indeed if we don’t fill each day with something more than we began it with. What is accumulated is a growing awareness and the willingness to experience and do the things that may come to us if we would only be open to them. These words are simply marking the path of being. How many pages may we fill in a lifetime of deliberate being? There is a hint of an answer revealed here and now.

    • Our Beautiful Choice

      “A person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing river of change, not a block of solid material; a continually changing constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits.” — Carl Rogers, On Becoming A Person

      I walk by a single tree that is clearly more distressed than it’s neighboring trees. The foliage has already begun to change to gold and faint orange. The drought most likely, I think to myself on one pass beside the tree. There are many loops past this tree, and thus many chances to observe things like the rate of change in the foliage relative to the trees around it. Each pass marks the incremental change in both the tree and me. I may have a little more agency, but every reunion with the tree reminds me that I’m really just moving in circles most of the time. We are kindred spirits, alive in the same moment, transformed by environment and place.

      “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for its not the same river and he’s not the same man.” ” — Heraclitus

      All these changes have brought us here. Collectively. I’ve turned away from the news of the world—politics and sports and celebrity gossip mean nothing to me now. To focus on what is within my control and nothing more is liberating in and of itself. We are explorers, charting a path through an upside down world. When we find the ground beneath us isn’t solid, as on a beach with the surf constantly pulling the sand from beneath our feet, we too must adapt and adjust our stance. And eventually find our way to solid ground once again.

      Life is change. And it’s never been nor ever will be fair. Environment and place are largely out of our control, but how we move through this world is our beautiful choice to make. We may get caught up in the swirl and concede the sinking or choose a path to something more tangible from which to base our growth upon. Decide what to be and go be it. Our potentialities are always ahead of us, awaiting our move in that direction.

    • Drive

      So if I decide to waiver my
      Chance to be one of the hive
      Will I choose water over wine
      And hold my own and drive?
      Oh
      It’s driven me before
      And it seems to be the way, that everyone else gets around
      But lately I’m
      Beginning to find that when I drive myself, my light is found
      Whatever tomorrow brings I’ll be there
      With open arms and open eyes, yeah
      Whatever tomorrow brings I’ll be there
      I’ll be there
      — Incubus, Drive

      When we finally step away from the endless loop of habit, when we break free of that relentless and pervasive collective belief about who we are and what we ought to be doing with our lives, we may be surprised at the character who emerges. There’s much more to us than the stories we’ve told ourselves. Identity is honed one choice at a time.

      Since completing a summer of transformative action, I gave myself a break. Easing off the twice a day workouts, having some carbs with that protein (or skipping the protein for carbs), and perhaps the most transformative thing of all, indulging in a few drinks to mark the occasion(s). A few days of that will inform pretty quickly. We can easily slide back into who we once were, or we can decide that there’s no going back and reset our days accordingly. It’s like moving back home after college—we’re different people than we were before, and those old rules don’t apply quite the same way.

      Choosing water over wine more often than the other way around profoundly impacts wellness. This is not much of a secret, but it isn’t something we like to think about when we’re deep in the cycle of having a glass of wine with dinner, and another to cap off the evening. I’ve found that my sleep score is greatly improved when I don’t drink. Deep, restorative rest is more important than ever for me. Is our sleep pattern the foundation of wellness? Ask someone who doesn’t sleep well. How’s your sleep? What ought to change to improve it?

      My answer to making significant changes in my life is to choose big goals but the smallest possible increments with which to move the chains. I have a big round number birthday coming up in the spring, and there are a few things I’d like to be when I get there. Healthy and fit, for starters. But also more informed than I am now by continuing on a path of learning that is accretive. And of course, this writing path has a natural milestone that must be crossed eventually.

      Each of us has a vision of who we’d like to be at some point in our lives. We forget that time is flying along (tempus fugit) and we’re quickly running out of runway to take off. Applying a bit of lift each day is the only way to ever get off the ground. Sure, light is where we find it—gratitude and awareness of who we are today is as essential to our wellness as sleep, diet or exercise, but rising to an ever-higher level of illumination optimizes who we will be when we get there. Growth is by its very nature expansive, even as it remains deeply rooted in identity.

      Whatever tomorrow brings, surely we hope to be there. Just who do we want to be when we arrive? There’s no time to waste now, friend. Drive.

    • A Dream of September

      “One of the most powerful wellsprings of creative energy, outstanding accomplishment, and self-fulfillment seems to be falling in love with something—your dreams, your image of the future.” — Ellis Paul Torrance

      If August infers grandeur and majesty, September—Sept—is related both to the clan (Scottish) or simply seven (French). The Highland Games return to New Hampshire, uniting the clans once again, and this was once the seventh month until some knucklehead added two months to the beginning instead of the end of the calendar, forever screwing up the logical order. Isn’t it funny how so many buy into a flawed story? We humans are completely illogical. But I digress…

      When you live in New England, September infers the beginning of magic. This is the high holy season of change and enlightenment. It’s a time of harvest, cooler days and the formal return to learning. We ought to listen to the rhythm of the season and embrace the transformation we wish to embark upon.

      We can literally feel it in the air—these thirty days of September are neatly packaged for life change. We must listen to what whispers. So what stirs within? Our creative energy demands a departure from what was towards what will be. And what a thrill to be a part of it!

      My enthusiasm may seem over the top, but isn’t this the place from which transformative action is born? Dreams aren’t meant to be dull and plodding, but crisp and bursting with flavor, like an apple awaiting plucking with a twist of the wrist. September is upon us, so what shall we harvest in our season? Dream big and get to work. This dream of September moves so quickly.

    • True Before You

      I want to unfold.
      Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
      for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
      I want my conscience to be
      true before you;
      want to describe myself like a picture I observed
      for a long time, one close up,
      like a new word I learned and embraced,
      like the everday jug,
      like my mother’s face,
      like a ship that carried me along
      through the deadliest storm.
      — Rainer Maria Rilke, I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone

      One need not be religious to reach for the divine. We may aspire for a level of consciousness and growth that prods us along on our journey through life, reaching ever-higher towards something more than this. Arete, or personal excellence, is a human aspiration for the divine, for which we know we’ll fall short. But reaching for it is the thing.

      We have this one shot at things. We’re told that if we do it right once is enough. It’s the doing it right part that’s the trick. What’s right for you may not be right for me. Life is a deadly storm with no survivors. To know this and still set the sails for a journey of a lifetime is audacious and liberating. Decide what to be and go be it.

      Truth is discovered through awareness and a ritual of keeping the blinders off. It’s cleaning the hazy film off the mirror and having a closer look. Truth is something that unfolds before us. We write it down, think it through, move towards something more visceral. Repeat. That’s where this writer has lingered lately (as if you had to be told). With every blank screen, with every word pondered and debated (Is this too much truth?) Just where are we taking this? How close to the truth do we dare to go anyway?

      If that sounds too serious and self-absorbed, well, believe me, I think so too. Blogging is simply the laying of breadcrumbs along this path of discovery. We’re on our way to find out. Have a laugh at the imperfections even as we strive for some measure of improvement. We’re all doing the best we can given the spoiler of how it all ends. That, friends, is the truth.

    • The Moments Between

      “The moments between your milestones are not filler.” — Nelou Keramati

      We know a milestone moment when we’re in it. It’s often marked on the calendar months or years ahead of time, carefully planned for and anticipated with excitement. Bucket list trips, weddings, reunions and graduations are milestone moments, and tend to dominate our thoughts for the time leading up to them and in our memories well after. And naturally, they deserve our full attention.

      But let’s not forget the moments between, the days when simply being alive within our routine existence occurs. This is the stuff of life—these days of work and hobbies and tedious chores practiced daily. Practicing awareness and intent in these moments too are our building blocks for a greater standard.

      Living an excellent life demands our best effort even on our average days if we are to raise our average. Leaning in to the daily activities that stimulate growth and development, stir and inspire, and demand more of us brings us closer to that more fulfilling life we aspire to. Each day is filled with something, why would we settle for less than is possible?

    • Pacing our Quest

      You must turn back to the simple things, just as your dream says, to the forest.
      There is the star. You must go in quest of yourself, and you will find yourself again only in the simple and forgotten things.
      Why not go into the forest for a time, literally?
      Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books.
      — Carl Jung

      Up earlier than normal, I read a book of poetry by a well-known author. One singular poem within it, read in a moment of searching, prompted me to buy it. Reading it again, I can’t for the life of me see it the same way. Everything has its time—we are the ones rushing through life.

      Lately, I’ve found myself licking my finger to turn the page well before I reach the end of the one I’m on in my haste to move forward in my reading. It’s a habit born of heavy non-fiction reading, and forcing myself forward to just get through some paragraphs I’d otherwise be lost in trying to understand. That may be okay for textbooks, but surely not appropriate for poetry.

      There’s a lesson here: we must know where we are in our lives and adjust our pace accordingly. Our pace of life isn’t meant to always be frenetic. We can make a case that it should never be. One day perhaps I will return to that book receptive to what that poet had to say. In the meantime, it rests on a shelf with all the others. Books are far more patient than people are.

      Pace is the thing. The right pace will lead us to awareness, holding our hand even as we try to pull away at every new thing crying for our attention. We must learn to slow down and see what we’ve been rushing past. Just as a poem isn’t meant to be quickly scanned on our way to the next, our hours are only ours when we pause this mad dash through our days and set a more gentle pace.

      What are we really trying to find anyway? Meaning? Knowledge? Satisfaction? These aren’t scooped up like power-ups in a video game. It isn’t found on the next page, or the next chapter of our lives, it’s found here and now, waiting for us to slow down enough to notice. We must pace our quest accordingly, if we ever hope to find what we thought was somewhere else.